Book Review – Angel Exterminatus and Betrayer

Review – With the crazy cold snap and snow storm that hit Michigan this week I've been cooped up and trying to catch up my my blog posts.  I recently finished up the next two books that have been released as mass market paperbacks for the Hourus Heresy series. As a futile stand against the new larger format books I refuse to buy any of them until they are released as mass market paperbacks. Which means this review is probably way past the time when it would be relevant.

Anyway because I like talking about what I've read here's my review:

Angel Exterminatus is a really good read. I've always been a fan of the Emperor's Children and the books continue to show just how sick a depraved the third legion has become. Spoiler Alert: Fulgrim becomes a daemon prince in this one. I'm not sure I love the way it happened but the overall result was pretty sweet. Oddly enough the focus of this book was focused primarily on Perturbo the primarch of the Iron Warriors who suffers from more but-hurt feelings than the rest of his brothers and as such tries harder than any of them. It's funny that his personality type closely mimics those you run into at some game stores on a regular basis. In fact, my favorite scene in the book is the one which literally portrays the Iron Warriors as power-gamers a nice throw back to the old third edition Chaos Codex (mmm ... 9 obliterators).

Betrayer is also a great read penned by my favorite Black Library Author. Spolier Alert: Angron gets the same treatment in this book as Fulgrim did in the last. This book also showcases what a complete d-bag Lorgar is. I mean yes he's become a bigger bad-ass and he fights a Titan but he's still a weasely little bastard that is manipulating everyone to his whims. It's interesting the way the Horus Heresy novels have shown that it wasn't really Horus but Lorgar that started the Heresy and all the other Primarchs were manipulated by the Word Bearers. (I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a subtle jab at the religious zealots of our own time or not ... but you could read into it what you want or just enjoy the story).

In all there have been few of the Horus Heresy books that I haven't been able to enjoy (Unless it's written by James Swallow...in which case don't touch it with a ten foot poking stick) and so long as the keep releasing the smaller size paperbacks I'll keep reading these.